China's GPS 'rival' Beidou
bbc.com
China's GPS 'rival' Beidou
1–10 of 80 posts
Re: China's GPS 'rival' Beidou
#2GPS has become so ubiquitous I honestly forgot that it was something that could be owned. It is cool to see some competition in the GPS world.
Re: China's GPS 'rival' Beidou
#3It’s interesting and odd to me that Beidou requires two-way communication, as opposed to other satellite tracking systems where the receivers are purely passive and satellites only transmit, not receive. Is there an explanation for why this was done?
Re: China's GPS 'rival' Beidou
#4It’s interesting and odd to me that Beidou requires two-way communication, as opposed to other satellite tracking systems where the receivers are purely passive and satellites only transmit, not receive. Is there an explanation for why this was done?
Unavoidable collection of user location data is the obvious reason. I would absolutely stay away from any device that has support for this positioning technology.
Re: China's GPS 'rival' Beidou
#5It’s interesting and odd to me that Beidou requires two-way communication, as opposed to other satellite tracking systems where the receivers are purely passive and satellites only transmit, not receive. Is there an explanation for why this was done?
The article talks about how it can be used to send messages but my first thought is that it could allow tracking of receivers. A scary thought if it does achieve widespread adoption.
Re: China's GPS 'rival' Beidou
#6India did something similar a few months ago. Each country wants to build it's own GPS for military purposes. At some point we have to stop calling it 'Global' Positioning System.
Re: China's GPS 'rival' Beidou
#7It’s interesting and odd to me that Beidou requires two-way communication, as opposed to other satellite tracking systems where the receivers are purely passive and satellites only transmit, not receive. Is there an explanation for why this was done?
Appears that two-way comms was required for Beidou-1, not BeiDou-2. See https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/30839/is-two-way-c...
Re: China's GPS 'rival' Beidou
#8India did something similar a few months ago. Each country wants to build it's own GPS for military purposes. At some point we have to stop calling it 'Global' Positioning System.
The generic term is Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). GPS is one type of GNSS.
Re: China's GPS 'rival' Beidou
#9It’s interesting and odd to me that Beidou requires two-way communication, as opposed to other satellite tracking systems where the receivers are purely passive and satellites only transmit, not receive. Is there an explanation for why this was done?
I am highly skeptical of this claim, it's either for higher accuracy of military stuff, or an internet connexion to get a key or the ephemerides or something. But nobody is sending signal to a satellite 21000km from the surface straight from a watch-sized device.
Re: China's GPS 'rival' Beidou
#10>... even precision missiles.
So if GPS were to be jammed, or disabled by a hack into the ground control systems -- PLA missiles would still work just fine. Hmm.